by Sándor Márai
“Answer me now, Ábel,” he says, his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. “What did you know of all this? What’s this about? Did you know about Havas, the actor, and Ernõ?…”
Ábel hears the question as from a vast distance, his eyes are closed, his arms and legs spread wide. It takes a great effort to sit up, then he feels about on the bedside table and lights what’s left of the candle he had used the previous night. The room is dark by now.
“I knew nothing,” he says slowly, his tongue heavy in his head, half-asleep. “I told you all I know this morning. There are no secrets. There’s nothing in any of this that we should keep quiet about.” Nevertheless, he falls quiet for a while. Then, uncertainly but more animatedly he continues.
“Did it never occur to the rest of you that Ernõ was always talking about something else? It’s hard to describe, but whenever I said ‘tonight,’ or ‘pen,’ or ‘person’ and he repeated the words ‘tonight’ and ‘pen’ and ‘person’ he meant something else by it. I often feel this way when I’m with strangers. I never felt it with you, not even when you didn’t understand what I was saying. With Ernõ I felt it all the time. Something separated him from us.”
The colonel’s son reached over for the tin of tobacco lying on the table, rolled a cigarette in his trembling fingers, leaned over to the candle, and lit up.
“So you knew nothing?” he asked, his mouth dry.
“Nothing.”
“And what you said to me this morning?…”
Ábel props himself on his elbows and with a new kind of carelessness, with a curious joy and sense of liberation, answers: “That I loved you? But of course I love you. But wait, Tibor. I am just beginning to understand. I love you, I like looking at you, there were secrets we shared, and so we told each other more or less everything we could tell. Or at least I did…I don’t have anyone else. Auntie, poor thing, the servant, and Father, and, well, you know all about him. One day perhaps, if we are still alive, once I have forgotten everything, he and I will be friends. I don’t know. Wait, maybe I can explain it to you now. I was jealous of you too. I wanted you to be my friend, mine alone, not Ernõ’s or Béla’s or the actor’s, none of whom were worthy of you. Of course I loved you. It’s not what Havas was talking about though, Tibor, not at all. I know that now. And I prayed for you. I have a special friend you don’t know about, the mandarin, who is disinterested and fair. I prayed that you should remain young, handsome, graceful, light in spirit, and that you should escape the filthy struggle in which our brothers and fathers are currently engaged. I prayed you should always be as elegant and refined as you are now, that you should suffer no crisis of doubt, that nothing should trouble your conscience; that you should always blush when someone addressed you. And loving you was a painful feeling, agony and humiliation, but there was nothing sly about it. Nothing. Do you believe me? And now, after all this, I no longer know if at bottom—that is, at some depth I cannot see—everything was in fact as simple, pure, and well-meant as I had thought it to be. But I knew nothing about any such arrangement, Tibor, believe me. You and I, we had to be together because something was drawing us that way. To me you were beauty and friendship, the ideal if you like, but never fear, I never thought of you that way. Maybe I would have liked to touch your hair, but that was all. No, no, no!” he cried and stood up. “Oh, Tibor, what has happened? Why is this happening to us? Look round this room, these things we stole, the things we said, all the games we played here. Can’t you see what it was all about?”
His voice was feverish, his passion high, his hands squeezing his narrow face.
“It really was intolerable the way they lied and tortured and hid everything from us, as by right, as if their world were the only one that was wise, mature, and decent. It was they who dragged Lajos away and tore his arm off, I don’t even know where, and so they went on torturing us with foreign languages, with the higher mathematics, and with rules of ethical conduct, while all the time they were sharpening their knives against us…I know you’re joining up tomorrow, Tibor, but I want no part of them, I want nothing of Havas’s world or Kikinday’s world or your father’s world…I would sooner die. We rebelled, Tibor. We defied their laws. That’s what this was all about. That was behind the games, the pretense, this room at The Peculiar. We had to escape, we had to be revenged on them somewhere, hence this room, and look, the saddle and the globe…! I love you, but I know now that my love is quite different from what Havas was talking about. I am your friend because you are more beautiful, because there is something in you I shall never possess…some lightness, some crucial difference in the way you move and speak…I don’t know. And it was all beautiful, The Peculiar, the secrecy, everything…But someone cheated, and that changed everything. Do you understand? Someone has cheated and now everything is foul. Are you as sick as I am? I can’t bear it…”
He bowed his head and rested it on the bedpost, as if about to throw up. The door opened without knocking. Ernõ and Béla stepped in and quickly slid the bolt in place. Béla was already drunk.
“After the rain stopped,” he said, his tongue heavy in his mouth, “our superiors, our mentors got drunk as quickly as they could.”
ERNÕ STOOD BY THE BOLTED DOOR, LEANING against it.
“Have you seen Havas?” he asked. He was without his pince-nez, his hands in his pockets. His voice was sharp, aggressive, shrill. Tibor took a step towards him.
“You stay where you are,” Ernõ ordered in a commanding tone, extending one arm. “And you too,” he said to Béla who was looking around, puzzled. “Stay on the bed,” he advised Ábel. “We’re listening. Go ahead, speak freely. What did he tell you? Everything?” And when Tibor moved he repeated: “I told you to stay where you are. If you attack me I will defend myself. I’ve had enough of punishments. It had to come out sometime. I’ve waited a year for this. No more superciliousness, Prockauer.”
He half withdrew his other hand from his pocket, then quickly slid it away again.
“Go on, Prockauer. Speak.”
His voice sounded quite different. It was as if a stranger were speaking.
“Have you gone mad?” asked Tibor quietly, mesmerized in the stillness.
“Ask me something else,” said Ernõ. “Out with it. Did he tell you everything?”
His eyes were constantly challenging theirs, seeking out now one, now another.
“You entered his den, did you? And was it interesting, Prockauer? And my delicate Ábel? How did you like it?”
When they remained quiet he continued.
“I have warned you once. It’s all the same to me. You can scream and shout, you can spit in my face, it’s all the same to me now.”
The silence disturbed him. He went on a little less certainly.
“I was there this morning, begging him to listen, to give up the whole thing…You don’t believe me? But he’s not human…”
He was thinking. Suddenly the flow seemed to have stopped in him.
“I don’t know…there are such people. That’s just the way it is.”
He immediately recovered.
“I will not allow myself to be insulted, I warn you, not even if he told you everything. I will defend myself, against all three of you, even if you bring the whole school, the whole town and the army, I insist on defending myself. If you don’t lay off me I will tell them everything. You can learn one or two things from Havas. He’s not alone, you don’t know this yet, but there is a considerable power ranged behind him and within certain limits he can do what he likes. If he takes against someone, that person is done for. He probably lied to you. Did he tell you some pathetic story? No? And what about me? What did he say about me?”
In his terrible impatience he was stamping on the floor and screaming.
“Why don’t you say something?”
“Is it true?” asked Tibor. The cobbler’s son threw back his head.
“It depends on what he said.”
“That you, and Havas, and the act
or…?”
“What?”
Tibor sat down at the table, put his head in his hands, and spoke quite gently.
“It seems to me that everything I see here has only served to put us to sleep. Doesn’t it seem that way to you?”
There was no answer. He quietly turned to Ernõ.
“Havas claims that you used to visit him.”
“I have nothing to say about that,” said the cobbler’s son.
“But this is a very important matter,” Tibor continued quietly but intensely. “If you don’t want to answer, that’s up to you. What concerns us is your betrayal. Is it true that you told Havas what we were doing? Is it true that you told him everything, all we said, all we planned, about this secret life of ours about which no one else knew anything?”
“Yes,” he answered sharply.
“Good. And is it true that you and the actor…that you worked together against us in some way, and that Havas put you up to this?”
“Claptrap!” he declared vehemently. “The actor was a vain monkey. What did he know? Havas had him in his grasp, but in quite a different way from me. The actor was working entirely for himself.”
“But then it was—you?”
“Yes, me.”
“But why? What did you want? What was it all about? What did you think would happen once we got mixed up in this mess? What’s the point of it for you? Were we not your friends?”
“No,” he said very loudly.
They fell silent. They listened.
“Are you not one of us?” asked Tibor quietly.
“No,” he repeated.
He too was speaking quietly now, as quickly and deliberately as if he had prepared for just this speech, every word of it ordered long ago.
“You were not my friend, Prockauer. You were not my friend, wealthy Ruzsák. Nor you, you genteel beggar,” he turned with a contemptuous flick of his head to Ábel. “I would have been happy to be your friend, Prockauer, delighted in fact, like the others here. Now I can tell you because I myself haven’t been aware of it for long, that there’s something about you that will be a source of much trouble to you throughout your life…something you can’t help that draws people to you. A particular set of people. But I couldn’t be your friend because you are who you are and I am who I am, my father’s son, and I cannot simply wriggle out of that. I would like to have been your friend. Your mother was generous enough to give me a pair of shoes for repair that first afternoon when I visited you, years ago, because she wanted to help my poor sickly father. You gave me coffee, Béla’s father gave me bread and cheese, and Ábel’s ancient aunt stuck a jar of preserves into my pocket each time I left you. No one had to stick jars of preserves into your pockets when you visited somebody. Shall I tell you everything? A thousand days, a thousand minutes per day, you hurt me in such ways. No, there was nothing you could do about it. Nobody can ever do anything about it. You were all sensitivity and goodness.”
He spat.
“I loathed your sensitivity. I loathed your goodness. I loathed you each time you took a knife and fork in your hands. When you greeted someone. When you smiled. When you thanked someone for some object or a piece of information. I loathed your movements, the way you looked, the way you stood up and sat down. It isn’t true to say that one can learn such things. I learned that there was no money, no power, no strength, no knowledge that could produce the same results. I learned that I could live a hundred years, that I could be a millionaire, that you might all be rotting in your graves, in your crypts I should say, since even in death you would have your private mansions, not like us, we dogs who live in cellars and kennels all our lives, that even then I would have no luck because I would recall how Tibor Prockauer could simply give a wave, smile, and say ‘Sorry’ when he unintentionally upset someone…Whenever I thought of this I would groan in my dreams, scream and groan ‘Tibor,’ and it would sometimes happen that I would turn and see my father who had been sleeping at the foot of my bed, and he would sit up and nod and say: ‘You are suffering on account of the young well-born gentleman. One must be cleansed.’ Cleansed, yes. I cannot cleanse myself, but I feel a little more cleansed when I think how you too are in the mud now. And that you too will die. I live in misery, I set out from another shore and there is no way over to your world from there, there never has been and never will be, not ever! Locusts and bears, says my father. I loathe you all. May you all drop dead, but let me first torture you a little. You may deny the world I set aside for your torture but it matters to you. I cheated. I lied. I betrayed you. I cheated at cards too, I cheated at everything. Every word of mine was a cheat.”
He drew a greasy pack of cards from his pocket and threw it on the table.
“Tomorrow Prockauer goes to Havas. You’ll go whether you want to or not. The chains that hold you are strong. Don’t bother struggling. May God have mercy on you.”
He stopped. The words stuck in his throat. He looked around, frightened. His voice was quite different now, almost tremulous.
“I would have liked to be your friend. But I was always afraid that you’d tell me off for something. I mean, you did once. On account of the knife and fork.”
“That’s something you can learn,” Béla retorted furiously.
It was the first time he had said anything. They stared at him. He was embarrassed and looked down at his feet. The candle had burned right down. They could only see outlines in the darkness. Tibor silently stood up.
“Well, then,” he said, somewhat at a loss. “We could go now, I suppose. I can’t think why we should carry on sitting here. We know everything now. And the candle has almost gone out,” he added as if that sealed the matter.
“You go ahead,” croaked Ernõ. “I want everyone in front of me. I don’t want any of you behind me.”
He kept his hand in his pocket and moved away from the door. Tibor raised the candle and held it up to his face. He gave a silent cry. Ernõ’s face was so twisted, it spoke of such unknown, unbearable sorrow that Tibor had to take a step back.
“We should tidy up here, of course,” he muttered uncertainly as he stood on the threshold. “We should all take what belongs to us before we go. We can leave the costumes here,” he said, pointing to the pile of clothes. “I don’t suppose any of us will need them again. In any case the game is over.”
“What a pity, Tibor,” said Ábel, almost weeping and feverish. He hadn’t said a word until now. “Look around you. It will never be like this again.”
They descended the stairs on tiptoe, Ernõ bringing up the rear. He followed them down the short way to the ground-level guest room in a state of inexplicable terror, as if he were in the gravest danger, almost fearing for his life. His elbows were tight against his waist, his hands never leaving his pockets. Not one of the others said anything to him on this short journey, not then, nor later in the night. It was a considerable surprise to all of them when, later, they had to look for him.
IN THE LONG, ALE-SMELLING, FRESHLY LIME-WASHED bar all done up for the picnic, they discovered a surprisingly lively atmosphere. Considering the early hour, the party must have been in full swing for a while.
At a folding table set up in the corner, at its narrower, upper end, sat Moravecz, Gurka, and the headmaster. The new arrivals hadn’t expected to see Kikinday sitting on the headmaster’s right. The town clerk was sitting between the gym teacher and the art master, while his son, who had been their classmate, was seated opposite him, silent and nervous, out of place. Now and then he would stand up, go over to the counter, and throw back a glass of pálinka, so that finally, much to the father’s surprise—for as far as he could see his son had not touched a drop of alcohol all evening—he suddenly collapsed about midnight, showing every sign of alcohol poisoning. In the succeeding chaos somebody indicated that they should be on their way. Laying the boy on an improvised stretcher, the majority of them departed.
Those who remained, Kikinday, Gurka—the master of festivities, who employed formal
courtesy to maintain a proper distance between himself and his ex-students despite the intimate atmosphere of the occasion—and Moravecz, drew closer together at the head of the table and permitted such students as still kept company with them in these late hours to join them. Ernõ spent the whole evening sitting silently beside the tight-lipped Gurka. When the gang and a few other hardy partying souls somewhat reluctantly accepted Moravecz’s invitation and the tipsy group moved closer to him, Ernõ stood up and left the bar.
Memories of this May picnic survived for several years, not only in the unwritten annals of the school but in the town at large. The general opinion was that it was one of the most successful graduation parties the venerable institution had ever organized.
Because of the unusual heat the assembled gentlemen had left the town in the early morning and, together with their students, had settled down in the shady, lantern-lit garden of The Peculiar before being sent running into the bar by the storm. Considering the airless and damp hall, the company, including the more moderate among them, rather surprisingly succeeded in drinking themselves into a party mood in the time the rain continued to fall, so much so that the various courses of the banquet, together with its customary toasts, tended to dissolve in a spirit of universal good humor. The effects of alcohol were amplified to an extraordinary degree by the intense heat. Feeling decidedly jolly, Kikinday beckoned over every young man who was liable for military service, felt his muscles, and addressed words of encouragement to them all regarding their shortened period of training, referring particularly to the one-armed one.